Lies, Damned Lies, and the Columbia Journalism Review’s Statistics
April 3, 2012 9:12 by Pesach BensonAs Mark Twain put it, “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics.”
No kidding. It’s amazing what one can do with numbers. Take for example, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), which published its annual census of imprisoned journalists.
Justin Martin, a blogger at the Columbia Journalism Review seized on the CPJ’s findings to create a new “statistic,” which he calls jailed journalists per capita.
These data are very helpful, but I think we can consider them under a new lamp by taking into account each country’s size. China and Eritrea, for example, have about the same number of journalists rotting in prison, 27 and 28 respectively. But the population of China is over 250 times that of the small dictatorship.
After crunching the numbers, Martin concludes that Israel ranks behind only Eritrea for jailing the most journalists per capita.
Martin’s point?
Israel, though, wants to be called a modern democracy and gets cranky when critics point out that it is not. Turkey, too, is a country that has responded to external pressure about its human rights record. Noting that these nations imprison more journalists for their size than Yemen and Iran is a powerful statement.
But there are two big problems here.
First, as Elder of Ziyon aptly points out:
The size of the country’s population has nothing to do with how many journalists are in the country. Israel has far more journalists than most countries that are much larger, because there is such intense interest in Israel. Moreover, Israel is liberal in allowing journalists to have access to the nation, as opposed to, say, practically every other nation in the Middle East.
If you want to see which nations jail the most reporters per-something, you must compare it to the total number of reporters – not the total population of the nation.
And secondly, a look at the seven journalists imprisoned in CPJ’s Israel and Occupied Palestinian Territory, shows that three of them — Ziyad Awad, Mahmoud al-Barbar, and Hani al-Agha — are actually in Hamas custody.
Despite all that, Martin’s message was unfortunately crystallized by Jodi Rudoren, the incoming NY Times bureau chief. Even if Rudoren’s suddenly spooked by her new assignment, this is a very ill-advised tweet.
It takes a creative mind to come up with a per capita twist on the CPJ’s findings. But Martin teaches us it isn’t hard to reach a skewed conclusion from someone else’s true facts.
dolma
9:35 am
Apr 03, 2012
3 of the 7 journalists are arrested by jhamas. and israel gets blamed. unreal.
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Rachael
10:00 am
Apr 03, 2012
It’s crazy! According to their thinking – Gaza should be ranking no. 1 with 3 journalists to a population of 1.5 million. That they forget to mention.
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Mark
5:14 pm
Apr 03, 2012
I’ll wager anything that Martin knows his so-called research yielded precisely that result. He didn’t “forget” to mention that fact – he buried it, no doubt employing some convoluted mental gymnastics about Israel somehow being responsible for any and all acts committed by Hamas. Israel Derangement Syndrome (IDS) permits no other result.
Now I’ll create my own statistic: IDS infects no less than 99% of all liberal regressives. My statistic, though, has the benefit of being fake but accurate!
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honestliar
6:26 pm
Apr 16, 2012
You forget that the reason that liberals can get infected with IDS is because liberalism is a mental disease in its own right.
In what other state of mind is it considered normal to ignore facts and behaviors, that are repeated over and over, that completely contradict your beliefs? It’s an entire ecosystem where liberals only see other liberals, are vetted by other liberals, and, consequently, think their beliefs are normal!
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Yair
12:46 pm
Apr 03, 2012
There’s also the difference between jailing a journalist, and jailing a journalist for being a journalist. Or do they think that being a journalist means you’re innocent?
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GoonerEll
3:29 pm
Apr 03, 2012
Precisely Yair. When the figures take no account of the reasons for the detention, they are meaningless. Also, it is far easier in some countries to call yourself a “journalist” than in others. I wonder if any of the 4 allegedly imprisoned in Israel are actually politically-inspired bloggers with terrorist contacts or backgrounds who, in order to sound more credible, call themselves “journalists”.
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Ivan
4:38 pm
Apr 03, 2012
When I was at Business School our Prof for Operations Research told us that when he was a student in Germany they statistically proved that the birthrate was related to the arrival of storks. That’s about the size of it – you can use what you want to make whatever point you wish to make. The number of journalists related to population is nothing less than an absurdity. As for Jodi Rudoren, her place of employment and the requirements to work there would explain her tweet. How sad and how pathetic!
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Geoff
5:13 pm
Apr 03, 2012
Amazing that this individual can be so blinded by their hatred of Israel that they employ such a distortion in order to prove a point. Some people will stop at nothing to damn Israel, so blinded are they by their anti–Israel (anti-Jewish?) emotions. The nazis lied about everything to achieve their ends. They wouldl have been proud of this latter day disciple.
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Gary Katz
7:23 pm
Apr 03, 2012
It’s not amazing – it’s typical.
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Howard
5:23 pm
Apr 03, 2012
There is a great little book, “How to lie with statistics” by Darrel Huff. First published back in 1954.
It was an assigned text book in our first Statistics 101 class at university and should be required reading for high school.
Shows you what can be done with statistics!
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Jeff Dodick
5:33 pm
Apr 03, 2012
These statistics are incorrect because they speak about a correlation between jailed journalists and the corruption of a society. However, it might be interesting to know what the single journalist who is jailed by the Israeli authorities (and not by Hamas) was charged with (as many of those on this reply list already pointed out). It is possible that he/she is actually guilty of a crime. That would be looking at causal reasons rather than just correlation. Any undergraduate student with a minor understanding of statistics would know this. Evidently members of the Columbia journalism review didn’t know this.
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Gary in Calgary
5:37 pm
Apr 03, 2012
The old adage oft quoted in our engineering statistics class was ‘Figures don’t lie but liars figure!”
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Robert Shore
7:12 pm
Apr 03, 2012
As has been stated, are they in jail becouse of what they wrote? Jailling someone becouse the goverment dosnt like there view point or to stop them from spreading information that dosnt support the goverments position is not the same as jailinng someone fore a real crime. If Isreal jailed journalists that wrote negative stories about the leader or position of the goverment Isreals jails would overflow. What is more telling is why they are jailed. Freedom of speach is a funtamental reight in Isreal which I dought exists in the other mentioned countries.
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Marvin Feil
2:56 am
Apr 04, 2012
Another quote worth remembering.
Figures don’t lie, but liars figure. – Samuel Clemens (alias Mark Twain)
Taken from: http://www.physics.csbsju.edu/stats/display.html
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Brent Pudsey
3:07 am
Apr 04, 2012
I was not impressed by for three reasons. First she did not look at the statistics on a per capita basis of how many journalists were in Israel. Secondly, she did not provide any reasons for why the journalists were jailed. Finally she did not give a solid argument to believe that Israel is a corrupt society. If she mentioned that journalists were arrested for writing about Israel’s military or government, her argument that Israel is unfair to journalists would be more valid.
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P Potaznik
6:08 am
Apr 04, 2012
Most important questions-why were the journalist jailed and did they getfair trials. – China, Iran, Turkey, Burma etc probably not. Israel yes and the courts probably bent over backwards not to jail them.
A disgrace to have Hamas added to Israels list.
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Gideon
7:31 am
Apr 04, 2012
Jodi Rudoren tweeted a retraction: https://twitter.com/#!/rudoren/status/187300680279662592
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Yonatan
6:47 pm
Apr 04, 2012
“Folks, I tweeted the CJR link w/o reading it carefully (and w/o reading any of the analyses). Apologies.”
Her “retraction” doesn’t say she was wrong in equating Israel to Iran. She was outspoken, aggressive and specific in her original tweet but passive and non-informative in her subsequent one. There is no equivalence of tone in the two and nothing remotely resembling an apology to Israel for her offense. She only admits her poor journalistic behavior by not “reading it carefully” and not “reading any of the analyses”. This is the incoming NY Times bureau chief? She’s a poor excuse for a journalist unless she writes for the National Enquirer.
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ruby
9:31 am
Apr 05, 2012
Damned lies indeed.
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Where Journalists Learn To Lie | israeloutlook.com
12:45 pm
Apr 09, 2012
[...] Lies, Damned Lies, and the Columbia Journalism Review’s Statistics [...]
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honestliar
6:17 pm
Apr 16, 2012
I learned the true value of statistics over 30 years ago. Come up with a conclusion and then come up with the data to prove it.
Back then, an anti-gun outfit published a study “proving” that the number 1 killer of children is a handgun. It turned out that their definition of a child included anyone 21 years and younger.
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Ralf Paris
4:02 pm
Apr 17, 2012
A standpoint based on statistics . What’s the most dangerous thing through out the world ?
Just a simple bed. You know why ? Stat. quote 99.99 % of people die in a bed.
Conclusion never go to bed to stay alive.
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Bugie, maledette bugie e la Columbia Journalism Review Statistiche. « Bugie dalle gambe lunghe
8:07 pm
Apr 30, 2012
[...] http://honestreporting.com/lies-damned-lies-and-the-cjrs-statistics/ Share this:TwitterFacebookLike this:LikeBe the first to like this post. [...]
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Imagine how bad the news would be without Obama [Updated] | The Warped Mirror
11:01 pm
Oct 01, 2012
[...] number of journalists jailed in various countries to calculate the completely meaningless ratio of how many journalists per capita are jailed in any given country. You can easily see where this gets us: Naturally, tiny Israel swarming with [...]
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Könnte dem UN-Votum für die Palästinenser eine palästinensische Pressefreiheit folgen? « Medien BackSpin
7:29 pm
Dec 11, 2012
[...] Das Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) veröffentlichte einen Sonderbericht über inhaftierte Journalisten. Der größte Kerkermeister ist die Türkei; weder Israel noch Fatahstan oder Hamastan erscheinen in den Top Ten (nicht einmal pro Kopf gerechnet). [...]
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